The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
Philosophy
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
The second object, and the most interesting to us, as coming home to
our physical and moral characters, to our happiness and safety, is to
provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the whole of that
population from among us, and establish them under our patronage and
protection, as a separate, free and independent people, in some country
and climate friendly to human life and happiness. That any place on
the coast of Africa should answer the latter purpose, I have ever
deemed entirely impossible. And without repeating the other arguments
which have been urged by others, I will appeal to figures only, which
admit no controversy. I shall speak in round numbers, not absolutely
accurate, yet not so wide from truth as to vary the result materially.
There are in the United States a million and a half of people of color
in slavery. To send off the whole of these at once, nobody conceives to
be practicable for us, or expedient for them. Let us take twenty-five
years for its accomplishment, within which time they will be doubled.
Their estimated value as property, in the first place, (for actual
property has been lawfully vested in that form, and who can lawfully
take it from the possessors?) at an average of two hundred dollars
each, young and old, would amount to six hundred millions of dollars,
which must be paid or lost by somebody. To this, add the cost of their
transportation by land and sea to Mesurado, a year's provision of food
and clothing, implements of husbandry and of their trades, which will
amount to three hundred millions more, making thirty-six millions of
dollars a year for twenty-five years, with insurance of peace all that
time, and it is impossible to look at the question a second time. I am
aware that at the end of about sixteen years, a gradual detraction from
this sum will commence, from the gradual diminution of breeders, and go
on during the remaining nine years. Calculate this deduction, and it
is still impossible to look at the enterprise a second time. I do not
say this to induce an inference that the getting rid of them is forever
impossible. For that is neither my opinion nor my hope. But only that
it cannot be done in this way. There is, I think, a way in which it can
be done; that is, by emancipating the after-born, leaving them, on due
compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their
maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a
proper age for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on
the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able
to conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the Notes on
Virginia, under the fourteenth query. The estimated value of the new-born
infant is so low, (say twelve dollars and fifty cents,) that it would
probably be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six
hundred millions of dollars, the first head of expense, to thirty-seven
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